Detailed Thanet parliamentary election results

South Thanet - results

Election Candidate	Party	Votes	%
Craig Mackinlay	The Conservative Party Candidate	18838	38%	Elected
Nigel Paul Farage	UKIP	16026	32%	Not elected
Will Scobie	Labour Party	11740	24%	Not elected
Ian Driver	The Green Party	1076	2%	Not elected
Russell James Timpson	Liberal Democrats	932	2%	Not elected
Al Murray		318	1%	Not elected
Ruth Angela Bailey	Manston Airport Independent Party	191	0%	Not elected
Nigel Askew	We Are The Reality Party	126	0%	Not elected
Grahame George Birchall	Party for a United Thanet	63	0%	Not elected
Dean Bert McCastree		61	0%	Not elected
Zebadiah Abu-Obadiah	Al-Zebabist Nation of Ooog	30	0%	Not elected

Voting Summary

Details	Number
Seats	1
Total votes	49401
Number of ballot papers issued	49573
Number of ballot papers rejected	163

Share of the votes (%)

Craig Mackinlay	38%	Elected
Nigel Paul Farage	32%	Not elected
Will Scobie	24%	Not elected
Ian Driver	2%	Not elected
Russell James Timpson	2%	Not elected
Al Murray	1%	Not elected
Ruth Angela Bailey	0%	Not elected
Nigel Askew	0%	Not elected
Grahame George Birchall	0%	Not elected
Dean Bert McCastree	0%	Not elected
Zebadiah Abu-Obadiah	0%	Not elected

Rejected ballot papers

Description	Number
voting for more candidates than voter was entitled to	70
Want of official mark	92
writing or mark by which voter could be identified	1
Total rejected	163

North Thanet - results Election Candidate Party Votes %  Roger Gale The Conservative Party 23045 49% Elected  Piers Andrew Wauchope UK Independence Party 12097 26% Not elected  Frances Rehal Labour Party 8411 18% Not elected  Edward John Targett The Green Party 1719 4% Not elected  George Francis John Cunningham Liberal Democrats 1645 3% Not elected  Cemanthe Jayne McKenzie Party for a United Thanet 136 0% Not elected Voting Summary Details Number Seats 1 Total votes 47053 Number of ballot papers issued 47226 Number of ballot papers rejected 161 Share of the votes (%) Roger Gale  49% Elected Piers Andrew Wauchope  26% Not elected Frances Rehal  18% Not elected Edward John Targett  4% Not elected George Francis John Cunningham  3% Not elected Cemanthe Jayne McKenzie  0% Not elected Rejected ballot papers Description Number voting for more candidates than voter was entitled to 55 Want of official mark 105 writing or mark by which voter could be identified 1 Total rejected 161

Ed. Congratulations to Craig Mackinlay and Roger Gale 

Election Thanet

Well it’s a nice day so get out and vote 

A go at a Thanet election special 3

Trying to predict which way the parliamentary election will go here in Thanet South seems to have fallen apart with various opinion polls disagreeing I think there is still a fair chance of winding up with either a UKIP, Conservative or Labour MP.

National government wise it is still looking like a no overall majority result with the SNP factor suggesting that the next parliament will lean a bit more to the left.

As there is very little I can do about any of this I am still thinking in terms of who will make a reasonable constituency MP and first up is writing to your MP if your benefits stop or you get some huge tax bill.

Of course your family income may be over £73,100 which takes you out of the benefit system and you may pay no taxes… but even then you may have occasion to write to your MP.

So after the election if you write to your MP… Will they reply to you? Will one of their office staff reply to you? Will they have a reasonable understanding of what goes on here in Thanet? Will they get Thanet much in the of government grant funding?

Predicting how the Thanet District Council councillors election will go seems to be the same only different, I am making the assumption most people will put their crosses against the same parties in this one as they did on the general election. So we will probably wind up with about a third UKIP, about a third Conservative and about a third Labour councillors at TDC.

As a bit of a TDC watcher over the past few years I am a bit uncertain if this makes much difference, however I would say you are doing pretty well if you can even find candidates you have heard of on your TDC ballot paper.

Over the last few weeks I have asked UKIP, The Conservatives and Labour for a TDC manifesto, nothing was delivered and as it's getting a bit late I am coming to the conclusion that most of the prospective TDC councillors have absolutely no idea what they aim to do.   

Ramsgate and the UKIP phenomena

Earlier today I found myself trying to explain to a European journalist why Nigel Feragae is standing as a parliamentary candidate in Thanet South, where Ramsgate is the main town. Trying to answer questions like: Are people here more anti Europe than in most parts of the UK? Did we have more of an immigration problem than the rest to the UK? Were European immigrants taking away the majority of jobs in the area?

Perhaps the key to this is in the first line of the post “trying to explain to a European journalist” what do I mean here? Do I see the people who live in the European landmass as Europeans in a way that I don’t see myself, or an English journalist as being European? Is there a sense in which I see myself as being part of Europe and more closely related to the other European countries than America or Australia? Frankly I guess the answer has to be no.

To be honest I feel much more united by a common language than relative distance. But all of these things are not peculiar to Thanet South.

I guess politically Thanet South was a marginal, but since the boundary changes would normally be seen as much closer to a Conservative safe seat, so I assume that most of the reasoning that UKIP have a chance of taking Thanet South must be based on the KCC elections where they did so well in Thanet http://democracy.thanet.gov.uk/mgElectionResults.aspx?ID=60&RPID=8510421 there is a sense on paper at least that all of these seats were taken from the Conservatives, here are the previous results http://democracy.thanet.gov.uk/mgElectionResults.aspx?ID=26&RPID=8510428

Of course in practice this isn’t exactly what happened inasmuch as the existing Labour seat was lost, and the new Labour seat was taken from the Conservatives, the Scobie effect?      

Perhaps the UKIP chance business is in some way related to expired seaside holiday towns, unemployment, large retired population, large population on benefits, but then wouldn’t the greatest increase in benefits and pensions come from Labour?

I may well add to this post as I think of possible answers.

I am also trying taking comment moderation off while leaving registered user on, frankly having anon comments on leads to so many spam comments as to be unmanageable. Whereas spam comments from registered users are less common.   

Trying to approach this from a different angle I suppose a question is: Is there an elephant in the UKIP room? Perhaps it is the question, what would UKIP do for Ramsgate?  

Nethercourt Ward Ramsgate Residents Meet Nigel Farage and the TDC UKIP Candidates for the May Elections. Watch the Videos.

I guess this is the main local news item and as I have just finished work I am going to watch them, Thanks to Barry James for all the work involved in getting them onto YouTube.





Manston Airport Question at 17.30



The RiverOak question on this one at 17.30

Putting your money where your mouth is with the Thanet South election.

If you are a betting person you will probably know that you can now bet on the results of the forthcoming general election.

If you looks on the Ladbrookes website (well actually you can’t do this without joining it so here is a screenshot) you will find the odds for the different candidates.

I am not a betting man so I may be wrong here, but I am pretty sure with this odds thing say 100/1, if you bet the amount on the right £1 and your candidate wins, you win the amount on the left plus you stake, steak and eat it, £101.

 I am using some of the politics books on the shelves in my bookshop to illustrate this post, possibly a subtle advertising ploy, we shall see. 

 

 As this is a post about politics an obvious question is am I lying? So lets get that out of the way first, you can peek at websites that want you to join without joining, here is the link.

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:LNZe8drQQfYJ:sports.ladbrokes.com/en-gb/Politics/UK-General-ElectionPolitics/UK-General-Election-t110000405+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk 

sneaky really. 

 If I was a betting man I guess I would put a tenner on Labour, not because I particularly think they will win, but because the odds look the best.

If you can’t follow this then you are probably reading the wrong post.

 Of course you may think that UKIP are twelve times more likely to win than Labour, mental arithmetic of this sort isn’t my strong point.

I also don’t know enough about gambling to know whether I would get the same amount if I bet now, if the odds change later on, if you know and they don’t then it may be worth the risk.

What interested me the most here is the that the experts have defined the cats in hell’s chances.

Are there any books written about past Thanet South politicians that don’t go in the sailing or music section in my bookshop?   

Sunday ramble and another old map of Ramsgate.

Click on the map above to enlarge it then click on it again to enlarge it even more.

I suppose the results of the general election are fairly high in most people’s minds at the moment, so a few thoughts on that first.

I have been an advocate of electoral reform for some time, although what shape that reform should take is something I am not certain about.

Had the election taken place with proportional representation and people voted roughly the same way, we would now be being governed by a Labour, Lib Dem coalition, or at least cooperation, of some sort I would imagine.

Is that the will of the people? Well I don’t know the answer to that one.

It does look as though, at the moment, if the Lib Dems get into bed with either of the two major parties, it will be to make a short term government, members of which are likely to have made themselves unpopular, by the time we get another election, probably in less than a years time.

Certainly at the moment it does look as though, with Europe coming unstitched economically, we are in for interesting times.

I terms of local issues, I have already forewarned our new incumbent, here it Thanet South, that I will be sending her a multitude of problems and have had a positive response.

Pleasurama is still not going anywhere much, I am pretty sure that pile boring should be well underway at the moment as I was assured by TDC planning on the 13th of November last year, that this would start early this year.

Perhaps the developer is waiting like me, for some sort of written report on condition of the cliff façade from TDC, perhaps they haven’t yet had one done and I suppose they would require some sort of reassurance that it won’t collapse on them before they start work.

My complaint about this to the local government ombudsman is coming to fruition and one aspect of this surprised me; the following is a quote from their latest letter to me.

“The Local Government Act 1974 says that the Ombudsman shall not investigate a complaint that concerns something that affects all or most of the inhabitants of the area of the Council involved. It seems to me that the situation you describe affects most Ramsgate residents to some degree.”

As when I complained about the flood risk implications, they acted on this and this produced the EA letter at http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/ea/ it raises some interesting thoughts, not the least of which, is did they act outside of the act last time?

I am putting together information about Ramsgate gasworks at http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/gas/ this is in the early stages and any help on this one would be appreciated. I have just received the land registry documents for the site and have discovered that it is still owned by two different gas companies.

That’s enough about public safety issues here for one day, so on to other things.

I am hopeful that the council will be granting security of tenure for the maritime museum, before the Operation Dynamo commemorations, so that the museum will be able to be open for them and The Sundowner take part. The promise from the council to grant a 25 year lease, in the week before lasts Isle of Thanet Gazette was encouraging, but I haven’t heard any more yet.

Update I have just noticed a sign on the maritime museum saying that it and the steam tug Cervia will be open for the two days of the Operation Dynamo commemorations.

I have had a positive response from the council that the café on the end of Ramsgate’s East Pier will soon be back on the market and hopefully open again.

I may ramble on some more, depending on how the day pans out.

The General Election and Thanet South Constituency Video of the two Main Candidates reactions to the result.

First my congratulations to Laura Sandys and commiserations to Steve Ladyman and the other candidates who lost.

The local implications here in Thanet South would suggest that we are likely to have a Conservative MP for some time to come, a majority of 7,617 is not something that would be easily overturned.

I can honestly say that in my dealings with Laura I have found her to be responsive and helpful and I am hoping that as a Conservative MP living in Ramsgate she will be influential in furthering Ramsgate’s case at all levels of government.






Many thanks to Your Thanet for the videos.

Here's the results footage, and speeches, from last nights count for Thanet South



Here's the results footage, and speeches, from last night’s count for Thanet North

Betting on the general election in South Thanet and some pictures of Ramsgate with some comments on them.

One of the aspects of press coverage about the election that interested me this week was the Daily Mirror’s guide to tactical voting, see http://videos.icnetwork.co.uk/m4/Tactical%20voting%20guide.pdf with so many people talking not so much about who the want to win the election, as who they don’t, I was surprised that Thanet south didn’t figure in this guide.

The betting odds see http://sports.williamhill.com/bet/EN/betting/g/136946/Constituency-Seat-Winner.html have the Conservatives as odds on favourites.

Talking to local people this doesn’t seem to be the case so at 7/1 a bet on Steve Ladyman may be quite a good price, or perhaps a flutter on the Lib Dems at 100/1.

Once again I am reminding people of the BBC poll indicator (click on the poll and it shows the result) at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/election_2010/8609989.stm as I look at it every day it’s handy to have the link near the top of the blog.

On to today’s pictures of Ramsgate see http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/510/id4.htm AMCO Express another small supermarket is to open in Queen Street, something I find interesting, one wonders if Tesco were wise to pull out when they did. The centre of the town was too busy to take photographs today.

The council seem to have got rid of all of the large unnecessary and unsightly road signs in the harbour area apart from one, I wonder if they just missed it.

The town council still haven’t appeared in The Custom House.

The roof drainage pipe is still being laid from the Pleasurama site to the harbour, I gather they keep encountering problems.

Where the trees were planted on Harbour Parade has been paved over, so presumably there will be no more trees going there.

Work still hasn’t started on the Pleasurama development, despite assurances from the council that it would start in January.

The Maritime Museum is still closed, let’s hope there is some progress on this before the Operation Dynamo commemorations and it would be a great shame if it wasn’t open then.

Thanet south general election candidate starts blog.

Peter Bucklitsch the Liberal Democrat candidate has started a blog see http://petersouththanet-libdem2010.blogspot.com/ there is no comment moderation set, although it has got irritating word verification.

He had also pointed me to his website http://souththanet-libdems.org.uk/ it is all a bit in an early days state as the two sites don’t seem to be linked, but does seem to be a movement by a local candidate to engage in open debate on the internet.

Incidentally blogger seems to be playing up a bit this morning with comments taking a while to appear, delete and feed, so don’t be surprised if your comments don’t appear immediately.